Deepwater in 1903 - Condemnation

[NW Mailing List]

[One activity that is not cover by many written railroad histories is what had to be done to acquire the land for the construction of the railroad, except maybe for histories of the land-grant railroads in the West.  For railroads that were constructed late in the game, like the Virginian and its predecessors in 1903, land acquisition was likely more complicated than for railroads in the sparsely populated West or  for eastern railroads, like the Virginia & Tennessee, constructed a half century earlier, because of the large number of land owners in 1903 as a result of the division of farms among heirs and because of the smaller lots as the land was settled by more people.  A legal notice in a newspaper of its day gives insight into what the Deepwater Railway faced in acquiring land in just one county of West Virginia for its construction.

The notice was address to some 150 individuals, partnerships and corporations who owned land, or had interests in land, needed by the railroad in that one county.  Some corporations included the Norfolk and Western Railway Co. (because the Deepwater had to cross the N&W lines in the vicinity of Matoaka), Pocahontas Coal and Coke Company, Princeton Banking Company, Pleasant Prospect Baptist Church, Widemouth Coal Co., The Girard Trust Co. (of Pennsylvania), Mercantile Trust Company (of New Jersey), etc.  The actual notice follows below.]

    You and each of you are hereby notified that a petition will be presented by Deepwater Railway Company, a corporation, to the Circuit Court of Mercer county, West Virginia, on the 17th day of August, 1903, at the court house of said county and a hearing will be asked for thereon for the purpose of condemning certain lands for the use of said railway company, for railway purposes, in which you are interested as owners, claimants and lien holders.  The lands proposed to be taken by said company are fully described in said petition and shown on the map and plats accompanying the same, and your interests in the said lands as owners, claimants and lien holders are stated in said petition as far as known to the undersigned.  The said petition, map and plats are now on file in the office of the clerk of said circuit court subject to your examination and inspection and to which reference is here made for descriptions of the lands sought to be condemned.  The said petition is entitled THE DEEPWATER RAILWAY COMPANY, A CORPORATION, VS. S. P. LAMBERT, AYERS HILL, ET. AL. CONDEMNATION PROCEEDINGS.
THE DEEPWATER RAIL-
WAY COMPANY.
        By
    A. N. CAMPBELL,
    BROWN, JACKSON & KNIGHT,
    R. C. & BERNARD McCLAUGHERTY

Bluefield Daily Telegraph
July 21, 1903

Gordon Hamilton
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20080123/aa5cb794/attachment.html>